Copyright, Nina Bagley

2005-2014
All rights reserved.
I spend a lot of time taking photos and editing them; words take that long as well. PLEASE DO WRITE AND ASK PERMISSION before using any of my words or photographs. Thanks for understanding.

June 2009

i've been doing a lot of short walks up and down these stairs to the upper back yard with walter of late, usually carrying him up and then plopping him down in the cool green grass of the drive or yard. he was afraid of the steps when first he came here last week, but with lots of trips outside, he's finally conquered the climbing up part; it's the going down that freezes him in place still, every time he reaches the top of the stairs. while wandering around out in the grass, i've noticed over and over again the little circles of taller grass, something i've always called fairy rings, and when thinking of rings i recalled one of my favorite quotes, by robert frost. i wrote the words down on old paper, carried them outside to place within a ring; but mr. trouble wouldn't stand for that, plunging headfirst into my artwork to consume a word or two if allowed. so, onto the steps they went, and walter has bounded over them ever since i put them there late yesterday afternoon.this month, my favorite of the year, has proven itself to be one full of magic and beauty. i sit out on my deck every evening and watch the sunset spread itself slowly over the western sky, watch the mountains turn from green to lavender, to shades of murky blue. i never tire of this; i don't grow weary of the quiet moments watching the dusk settle itself around me, seeing the stars come out shyly one by one, listening to the final warbling calls of the wood thrush for the night. i'm quite sure there are those of you who would be climbing the walls for lack of some other place to be, a restaurant or a movie theatre, a grocery store to buy your exotic foods, your beautiful faraway fare. this does not grow old for me, these times of quiet and contemplation; i'm still surprised each time the moon rises above these trees, each time a cloud is painted pink or orange and fades into the night in the gauzy shape of a dream. oh, lucky, lucky me!

my beautiful elder child, named for a bird, came home this weekend to spend some time with me; we laughed deep into the night, shared nonstop stories with one another, marveled over walter, hugged and joked and opened our hearts again and again and again. motherhood just seems to keep right on getting better, the older we three get, the more our lives breathe in and expand out beyond the boundaries of known places and scenery. i love my boys so much it hurts; to share robin with walter was a sweet sweet thing, to watch him loving on and playing with a puppy he only just met a scant three days ago. i see walter as a gangly, awkward unsuspecting little puppy, innocent to everything from figures on tv to diane keaton as beloved annie hall singing "seems like old times" (a sound that frightened him so much he stopped his chewing to whimper frantically in my lap). we all grow up so awfully fast, every one of us, and time keeps right on marching no matter how vainly we attempt to frame things in our dusty boxes of scattered memories. little boys turn into men, puppies into elderly dogs that eventually leave us behind; and i'll be leaving someone behind as i fade into senility one day, much as my father is leaving us, bit by little remembered, fragmented bit in his beautiful and genteel old age. ah, life. it fills my swelling heart to overflowing, day by intricate day.

i've slowly begun to integrate my jewelry work back into the day to day routine here on firefly road, tough as that may be with one frisky, scampering baby springer spaniel trying his best to foil me. for now it works to have a tray with tools and gemstone beads on my lap here in the living room, a tray that can be set down each time i have to rise and take walter out, to feed the both of us, to check on incoming mail. the colorful "begin" piece has been purchased by a shining star (thank you so much, ms. jonatha) who will wear it with beautiful flair; this other i've finished will be listed in my etsy shop as soon as i can get this fool connection of mine to allow the photos to load. i love the lighting in this photograph - it hints of the twilight beginning to fall outside the windows, of the wash of golden light that paled slowly with the dying of the day. come, moth, come peaseblossom, come puck and mustardseed - come dance in the grass with me as the lightning bugs rise, come whisper ancient secrets in my quiet, listening ear!

i've enjoyed showing you jewelry pieces as they begin to unfold in front of me; this time i've stitched one of my sterling silver gates to layers of fabric that are the color of the morning sky, dusty blue interspersed with whites and cream. when time permits, i''ll hammer or engrave words into a silver panel on the back, from which i'll dangle bits of glittering, heavenly blue. it's fun to see these designs as they emerge from the unconscious part of my mind; the surprise is as much there for me as it would be for you when finally you see the finished piece. for now, i'm enjoying sitting and working with the sky and mountains framed in the windows across the room from me; for now i'm happy to share my time with walter as the two of us continue to learn more about one another. life is sweet, that way. xo

moths are once again on the wing now that it's the middle of summer here on firefly road; now, too, that i am outside barefoot in the wet morning grass early mornings with walter, i'm seeing the last of the previous night's lingering visitors resting in the glistening dew. this one i found early today, at 7am; and because it didn't flinch as i picked it up, i assumed it was already dead. in we came, this moth and walter and i, and i snapped a photo before setting it aside to save the wings -at which point it flew up to the front windows and i assume is resting there until nighttime falls once again. in the wings of this moth three things i see:

looking a little deeper, i see paper cut out shapes much like the ones we used to fold from notebook paper and snip into snowflakes, or paper dolls. or raggedy valentines. what things might you see in these wings?

some of you will recognize this wonderful rug, hand hooked by my grandmother from strips of old woolen clothing, and resting now on the polished hardwood bedroom floors of my parents' house in alabama (keli, this photo is for you). i love the colors of this rug, ones that are dominant here in my own home in north carolina. i love the deep reds, the soft dusty blues, the faded yellows like the inside of a roadside buttercup. i'd never been one to use much color in my jewelry, or the mixed media bookwook and assemblage that i create - at least not until this beloved june was fully in summer swing. and now? well, now. goodness. i can't seem to get enough color into my work. i credit the beautiful, magical words and imagery of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream - it has always seemed very special to me, one of my favorite plays of all time, full of mischief and mayhem, magic and soft summertime. there are the spritely fairies who, shakespeare says, are employed to seek "dew-drops, and hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear", to "fetch jewels from the deep". there are the beautiful names of Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustardseed; there is the nighttime prankster called Puck, and in my hometown of montgomery - on the shakespeare theatre grounds under a tree beside the lake - there is a marvelous bronze sculpture of Puck himself, dancing under the leaves. and now, yes now, as the lightning bugs multiply, as the blue ghosts that appear for a mere two weeks circle and twirl and leave tiny blue-colored streaks of light in the night, as all of the magic of summer unfolds, it is the words and images of this play that i am remembering each and every june and july. and it is those words and images, little tidbits of magic and splendor, inspiring me to make jewelry pieces that are playful and full of color and summer, mystery and the sparkle of life.

i've started three necklaces - more like four, if you consider the bits and strands i've begun and set aside now that i have a baby in the house. nothing that i'm showing you here, quite obviously, is in its final, finished form. the "begin" piece i started in alabama, working on the dozens of multi-colored gemstones that drip down in what one of my sweet valley ridge students, linda, calls "chandelier tassels". i love the glittering drippiness of that name, the light and the effervescence of it - and it will stick. when i was showing the "begin" piece to kathy here at home the other day, she remarked that the mix of colors and shapes reminded her of a friendship quilt, one that some call crazy. yes, yes indeed. i do love that as well. and the moth? well. a little bit of shakespeare and firefly road thrown in to the mix and we have mountain magic. and to you who have been reading my words this past week and are drawn, as you say, "like a moth seeing the light", this piece needs no further explanation. i thank you for the gentle nudges and for the wonderful inspiration. xo

greetings from my world that has begun, ever so slightly, to tilt back to its normal central surroundings, where i can pad about this house (around the unpacked suitcases, mind you) and feel like i am sort of home again. i sit here at my trusty blue green desk, looking out at the trees and the birds and the very seldom passing car and can honestly say that i feel all is right with my world. imagine - contentment in a generous dose. the words you see here, cut out so neatly and left to battle the open window's breeze, have stayed right on my desk top, next to a prehnite bead of green, for a couple of months now, waiting to be placed wherever i had intended them to go. i no longer remember. what is my familiar landscape, anyway? what is yours? i find random words scattered here and there throughout the house, snipped from vintage children's story books, from ancient dictionary pages. aspen ate the word "tree" once, when i fed it to him. he ate it and looked at me as if to say what's next? no telling what this new member of my family will find to swallow in any given corner of this place.

here i am, reading out on the deck just as the final evening sunset light was fading and the lightning bugs were rising in big numbers from the cool blades of grass down below. it is a luxury to sit out of an evening, to leisurely read a few pages, glance up at the changing colors of the sky, look out over the mountains to see the last of the crows flying overhead to wherever they go every day at dusk. i don't see them come back in the morning, but there they'll be, every evening, flying overhead in groups of ten, twenty, more. i hadn't been able, since bringing walter home, to enjoy the outdoors like this since he'd surely slip through the wide open rail spaces a good fifteen feet directly below, and roll.

thanks to kathy's visit yesterday, there is now a lovely beehive patterned chicken wire (that's how i choose to see it, anyway) stapled to the wood to keep a little one from tumbling down over the edge. i've moved the metal dining table over to a new corner spot, under the shade of a young walnut tree, which provides both a lovely place to sit and an even lovelier thing to see when i glance out from the little screened porch there on the side. the shadows of the leaves make a playful pattern on the tabletop grid when the breeze blows through, and i imagine i'll be carrying a tray with jewelry supplies out in the mornings, once i get myself and little troublemaker back into a regular routine.

and finally, a photograph that i took of my little friend walter yesterday evening, just before we went out to the deck for our 30 minutes of leisure; he is very much afraid of the concrete steps that lead from the driveway and back yard to the house and side porch, and as i snapped this photo, he was getting ready to bark at me in frustration. i don't mind at all when i scoop him up and cuddle him as we walk back into the house. and if you happen to come looking for us in the evening anytime soon, you'll find us out there under the blossoming stars, watching the fireflies flickering into the dusk like little natural fairies, blinking their hellos. welcome to my beautiful little fairyland. xo

Faeries, come take me out of this dull world,For I would ride with you upon the wind,Run on the top of the dishevelled tide,And dance upon the mountains like a flame.~William Butler Yeats, "The Land of Heart's Desire," 1894

do you believe in miracles? i do - i believe in them all, the big and the small. and what is small, anyway, when you are talking about a miracle?

walter slept through the night last night. oh, hallelujah! (can you hear leonard singing in the background here?) i woke at 6:50 this morning, when there was a fair amount of light beginning to peek through cracks and crevices (and as leonard says, there is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in); i heard some little minor whimpers and sat up to see walter sitting patiently inside the crate, waiting for me to wake up. this is an amazing thing, and an amazing time of day, when dew has fallen outside on everything and makes the world seem fresh and clean, the way it glistens and shimmers and the way i can scrawl a word into the glass topped table on the deck with my finger... and i don't write "lost" or "sad" or "broken"; i scrawl out, first thing, hallelujah. it is a new day, and i'm happy to be in this shining world. my world. and the world that wraps itself around my quiet little life, within and without. and when i glance at the open front door, what i do not see is an empty space, but a place letting in the light. well, still empty, yes. but opening this place to the light.

i'm beginning, in fits and starts, to look out the windows again. it is a wonderful thing to come up for air from the hyper-focusing of first days with a brand new puppy, a beautiful breath of fresh air to sit here and write and open up myself to you and you and you. especially to you. never mind that every level surface of this house right now is covered with stacks of papers, unread books, opened boxes, unwrapped gifts. never mind that the suitcases still stand at the front door, packed from their travels here and there, sentinels to my 5 1/2 week absence. never mind that the kitchen counter still has plates and glasses to be put back in cabinets, that there are still grocery bags out in the car. i am looking out the window again, and basking in the light. never mind that i had to frantically dash out the door yesterday to make it to walter's first vet appointment, forgotten in the upside down state of my schedule, this house, my life. there was beauty in the balance of my carrying little walter in to the clinic and walking out with both walter and the little white box containing aspen's ashes, which rested beautifully on the front seat beside me as we all made our journey back home. there is such beauty in a balance like that, such grace. i'm eternally grateful for minor miracles like that. like grace. and peace. and life.

a miracle is a treasured dear friend coming from 80 minutes away to bring crab cakes and tortellini salad for lunch, unpack boxes, install chicken wire around the deck so walter won't fall through. a miracle is remembering in the midst of grocery shopping to buy myself some lovely fresh flowers - calla lilies, symbols of renewal and hope. a miracle is receiving a beautiful poem written especially for me by a mystery man who was moved enough by my words and my photos and my work to write the lines of poetry. and his name, of all things, is ben. imagine that. and he turns out to be a long ago beautiful friend, and i am getting to know and appreciate him ever so much more, all over again. a miracle, more great than small, a miracle nevertheless. i watch walter sleeping in his crate just now, sleeping the sleep of the innocent, and i smile at the miracle of this. so sweet, this life. so full of wonderful things. my life is one long string of miracles. it startles me a little to tell myself this, to write those words down, lest i be overreacting, lest my joy deflate and sink down. oh, what the hell. hallelujah! i'll carry that word outside after this and toss it into the morning sun. here i go. xo

and a blurry good morning to you. how many times have you seen a sunrise shot from my deck? i believe this is the first of many. i'm awake these days at some time in the middle of the night, briefly, then again earrrrly before dawn. i wish that i had something profound or beautiful to share with you, but the mind does not function clearly before the sensible hour of 9am. perhaps i'll learn to be an early riser after all.

or maybe not. maybe i'll spend the rest of my days being sleepy, tumbling back into bed when the house falls quiet again...

Morning Poem

Every morningthe worldis created. Under the orange

sticks of the sunthe heapedashes of the nightturn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches ---and the ponds appearlike black clothon which are painted islands

of summer lilies. If it is your natureto be happyyou will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imaginationalighting everywhere. And if your spiritcarries within it

the thornthat is heavier than lead ---if it's all you can doto keep on trudging ---

there is stillsomewhere deep within youa beast shouting that the earthis exactly what it wanted ---

each pond with its blazing liliesis a prayer heard and answeredlavishly, every morning,

whether or notyou have ever dared to be happy, whether or notyou have ever dared to pray.

a lot of thank yous are in order this morning; i hope that you'll understand that right now i can't write each of you personally to thank you for your good wishes and advice, as time and one bundle of furry energy simply do not permit me to respond to everyone who has written. i thank you deeply, from the bottom of my very frazzled heart. i was able to retrieve my five weeks' worth of mail yesterday morning, and the two cartons were full to overflowing with packages and sympathy cards regarding aspen. how can i begin to thank you properly? i sat and read while little Trouble slept, and more than once was moved to tears and sobs. the thing that finally broke me down was the card from the vet clinic, where each of the three vets and every one of the employees wrote a little note about how much they loved my aspen, how sad they were with his passing. sorrow wells up at the slightest touch, and i walk around feeling like a saturated sponge, so full of deep emotion that if i were to be bumped, i'd pour right open. thank you, thank you, thank you for caring about my life, my joys and sadnesses, my everything. and to a dear reader, christina - thank you for suggesting i check the "numbers lock" key on this laptop computer. who knew?! it worked, and for the time being i can at least sit here at my beloved window and blue green table to write and tap and ponder.

i have a little favor to ask of readers and friends: i ask this in hopes that i will not sound ungrateful, but please try not to tell me anymore that i got mr. walter too early. he is six and 1/2 weeks old, the breeder insisted when i questioned her that it was fine to get him now (as she requested), that he was weaned, and it was (sort of, perhaps 2 1/2 hours off my usual path) on the way back home from my parents' house in alabama. yes, he is very young. yes, he misses his mother and his family. i am all too aware of this by now, with his crying and frantic eating, his desperate chewing on my toes. but he is here with me now, at his tender little age, and i have to do the best that i can do without worrying about his being too young to have left his mother for me. i am reminded of the times when i myself was a very new mother, when well meaning great grandmothers suggested i cut the baby's nails so he wouldn't scratch his face, when people gave me dr. spock child rearing books in hopes that i'd find the time to read them. i was touched by their concerns, but felt a little defensive as well. even now i am apologetic as i write this, and am hoping you'll understand the tender and even raw side of my emotions. i'm sorry. i really am. ok?

i also apologize in advance for the inevitable barrage of puppy photos in the coming weeks; gone for now are the lovely close up images of raindrops on leaves, of colorful birds at the feeder (empty, very empty), of distant mountains shrouded in mist. instead i find myself posting blurry photos of a fuzzy little face or spotted, swollen belly, and wish i could keep a moving target still for long enough to snap a clear and focused image. ah, puppy love - the joy and the frustration of it, all rolled up into one. i sit here at my desk with legs folded up on the stool, lest my feet and ankles be chewed by needle teeth to bits; i watch my little creature twitching as he dreams some big old dream, and wonder what the hell i've brought into what was formerly a very peaceful life... a life far too quiet, with my best buddy gone. aspen was two years old when he came to us, far past the chewing and the whimpering, the crying and housebreaking and the frenzy. i remember, though, being sad that i never knew him as a puppy, never watched him grow into the character that he beautifully was. and is. his spirit is here, i know that it is, and lucky little walter has the loveliest guardian angel of all. xo

let me share with you a place called Grace. and as i hope the rest of you already know, with family love comes much of that - grace. with the right sort of time spent with the ones that you love (chosen family or the ones we've had from birth, it matters not) we receive all sorts of wonderful things like comfort and laughter and tender recollection spilling out of a whole boxful of memories. a whole overflowing lifetime, in fact, that grows fuller and fuller as the years march past. there comes with grace a gentle way of remembering things, of falling into place as comfortably as we possibly can, of drifting with the current flow rather than fighting the present current, of acceptance, of generosity, of exquisite bittersweet sadness and pain. i come to alabama as often as i can these days, to visit a father who will be 87 in july and whose mind continues to drift into a world that we as his loved ones are often times unable to enter, for lack of knowing which door to pass through. i come to visit my mother, who turns 82 at the beginning of autumn, who continues to walk with beauty and elegance and ease. with my mother i've gone to the little church called Grace, out in the countryside, to visit the grave of my brother so that the peppermint geraniums can be watered in this 100 degree heat, so that we can walk the old brick winding paths to the little courtyard enveloped in cool, damp shade of an early morning, so we can sit at the marble table there with breakfast in a basket and languish in the rapidly evaporating cool of the morning, smiling and laughing and sitting quietly together for a bit.

i come to be here, just to be here. i come to be. i come. it is here that i come, and here that i remember, and here that i'll always feel like a wistful little girl, grown big in her older age, grown wrinkled, grown frowsy, but always a little bit (or very muchly) innocent at heart. i come here and continue to listen for the crazy chortling of the great barred or horned owls in the depths of summer nights, i come to sit beneath creaking old wooden ceiling fans, culled from ancient houses that daddy tore down so many years ago; i come to smell the magnolias and mimosa, to watch for the moon through the spanish moss and leaves, to glisten limply with sweat in a beautiful old southern house with seven acres of woods and windows thrown wide open to the birdcalls and the breezes and o! the stifling late afternoon heat and dense humidity. i come for this, i do.

in an old high school yearbook photograph of my mother, one i've never before seen until yesterday, i audibly gasp when i see the youthful image of myself gazing off to the side - high cheekbones, round face, piercing eyes, a gaze that expresses hope and certainty. a young face, in which my own is mirrored with startling clarity. i look at my present day mother and see the beauty that resides there still, inside and out. i sit in her chair and twist sterling wire around pearls, i stitch with a needle and thread; and as i glance down at these hands, it is the work of her fingers that i see. and when my father gazes at me, it is over and over again that he says "you look so much like your mother; you do" and i nod back to him in agreement, again, and again, with a smile.

i married out under the twilight of these trees, a lifetime ago, one midsummer's night when lightning bugs were just beginning to rise from the wet grass at our feet, when frogs across the way were beginning their chorus for the night. where did that younger woman go? what goals have i reached since then, what dreams have i raised up to the sky to release, to let go? it was a long, long faraway time ago. and oh, the places since then that i have seen, the people (and beloved creatures) i have greeted with hello and - again, too soon - with farewell. they've drifted in and out of my life, i've floated into theirs and then back out again. i don't hold on. i'm walking on ahead. and this time around, i'll be driving back through georgia tomorrow and picking up a little six week old springer spaniel puppy (scroll down to the seventh row) that i've named walter - walter bagley - around whose neck i'll attach the new little brown and white polka dotted collar. i will not walk into that empty house alone; i'll carry him next to my heart out onto the deck, in the dusky cooling velvet of twilight, aspen's spirit at our side, and show him all the things about a night in june that i love and know. he'll love his new life, i'm hoping, because i am ready to be loved, he will love me because it is time....

when i get back to my house, and the new computer (spring green, how nice) arrives at my door, i'll be more fully able to share with you the stories and images from valley ridge, my other home away from home. i'll brag on my students, on their humor and their eagerness, their talent and their tender lives. i'll show you the beauties that they created with a little guidance and encourage- ment, and i'll tell you some stories about the rolling farmland hills of wisconsin in a place that will unabashedly win your every heart. but for now, i'm headed back to sit with my parents under the fan, where my father will tell me his beautiful stories (i've memorized them by now, but i'll listen as if it is the first time i've ever heard him tell me these things, i'll laugh and i'll smile, yes i will), where the little girl in me rests easily, in a place called foxwood, in a time called soft and beautiful june. xo

i know you think i have forgotten you; i know you think that my life is so full that i don't have time to think about the places and the people that i love. at least i worry that you think this way, i've always been so good about the checking in, the stories of leaves and grass and water that surround me, the creatures that stop in for a visit, the people that i see when i am off away from home. it hasn't been the case this time around; my laptop computer has finally refused to allow me to type understandable words, leaving numbers and dashes in place where i've typed o, p, j, k, l. even m and n. do you know how many different words contain these things? i've waited for nearly a week to purchase another flash drive when away from the farm here in wisconsin and in town where we've driven to run our errands. so, hello. i say to you hello.

i'm going to keep this brief; i'm typing on my friend bill's computer, have edited only a number of the photographs that i've snapped while in wisconsin for the past week. if you don't remember, i'll remind you that i left california and flew back to alabama, where i visited with my parents in the opening of june, my favorite month of the year, and stood with my mother at the screened door in the front one night and waited in the dark for the lightning bugs to appear. one, two, five and six began their light show, and we felt that summer had officially begun. i slept in the most comfortable bed on earth with windows wide open, listened in the middle of the night to two huge barred owls talking back and forth to one another. it is a wild and haunting melody, and if you've not had the chance, then you do not know of the mystery of which i speak. it's worth lying awake hours after turning out the light, just for that chance. and then i drifted off to sleep, and suddenly here i am in the heart of southwest wisconsin, at valley ridge, where i am at home away from home. bill and kathy treat me like a queen, a sister, a dear dear friend. and i am. i love it here. i love my friends, so much.

i've been to the north of this state, where the clouds and the chill in the air prevented us from venturing out beyond the light of our fire. it was a beautiful spot, but not nearly as beautiful as the rolling hills and forests of this place.

and back to valley ridge we came, where the birds sing far past sundown, where the deer step out from the shade of the woods to the meadow just below my bedroom window. little creatures, everywhere. i love this world. i love it here. i do.

tomorrow i begin another three day workshop to an entirely different set of splendid women. last week's group will be a difficult act to follow; they were so full of pee and vinegar, as we say in the south, so full of life and humor and stories that it will be hard not to expect them to walk in the door and join the other fifteen who are setting up studio camp. being surrounded by windows that look out to green rolling meadows, to a whirling windmill, to swallows and bluebirds that are dipping and darting in the wind makes for a very creative energy. no wonder everyone who has been here before tends to come back again and again and again. there is magic in this place, in the air, in the grass at my feet. magic and beauty. you'll see.

i have snapped many photos of these wonderful gals, of the beautiful story booklaces that they created while here; i don't have the time right now to edit them, to share with you; but i will. i promise i will.

remind me to tell you later, when i have my own computer back (a new one, actually, coming soon) and the time to write, about the two bald eagles with their tremendous nest in the valley not very far from here - about the way they swooped away to bare branches far across our little road so that we'd not see the nest but would instead focus our attention on them - about the way the swallows who'd built a nest under the bridge dipped and flew in circles about us, making us feel as if we'd stepped right into a very old and lovely fairy tale. remind me to tell you about the new little fellow i've named walter, who will be coming into my life once i get back home in the third week of june. remind me. i know you'll want to know. xo

i have been in a dilemma as to how to write about the second leg of my california trip - i must have taken 500 photographs, all of them absolutely stunning because the subject matter was so vast and beautiful; but to take the time to edit them with a laptop that is freezing on me 50 times a day is no small feat, and to convey the even wider range of emotions that i experienced while at asilomar is proving to be an almost impossible task. a lot of what i find myself turning back to when remembering the trip is a thirty minute quiet time that i spent by myself out on the balcony in the last of the late afternoon sun; i'd stepped out there to read my email and have a short glass of wine while waiting for my guardian angel friend to return from her day's trip a couple of hours away. i had a small cache of cashew nuts next to the glass, and before i knew it, i had a friendly visitor. then two. these are california scrub jays, creatures that apparently are not shy in the least, and within five minutes' time, i had them landing right in my hand and whisking the nut away in their beaks, up and over the rooftop next door to the trees beyond my view. there was the quick and gentle weight of the birds there in my palm, the incredible sensation - so fleeting - of their feet as they landed and took off again in what must have been a fraction of a second. try photographing this with one hand out, extended flat and nut balanced there, one hand holding the camera as level and still as possible before the bird was spooked. i do not want to hear from west coast california friends any disparaging words about the way they feel towards these birds. i know they are pests, i know they bully other birds, i know they nab eggs and other things from fellow winged creatures' nests. i also know that they came to me without any fears, they trusted me enough to alight in my outstretched hand long enough to grab the nut, they had enough grace to return over and over and over again until my supply was gone. and then they stayed and visited with me. and as i watched one of them fly down to the ground below, i was amazed as i watched it take the nut and bury it deep in the sand with its beak. amazing. and beautiful. and blue.

i just do not know what to write after this. there are so many, many lovely images to share, and stories of my dear, dear students and the three full days that we shared with one another. there was the sound of the surf and the smell of the wood smoke, the way that the wind blew my hair. there was all of this, and the permeating sadness that followed me wherever i went. there was the pushing sense of letting go, of giving up, of turning and walking away. but how do i write about it, today? so i'll share with you a few quiet photos, and leave the rest for another time, another day.

the lone cypress tree - a view i begged and pleaded politely to see (can you blame me?)

a late afternoon walk by myself in the cold, through the mist coming in from the sea, when i remembered my brother ben, and my beloved four legged friend gone away

Heart Catcher Workshop

You can click on the heart photo above for information regarding this upcoming workshop. I'm offering an early bird, price of $295.00 for the entire two days , if you pay before April 5; after that date, the price will be $320.00.